I currently make paintings on canvas in acrylics, oils, ink, and found objects. My work addresses ideas of language, spirituality and consciousness, and runs in two discrete directions: (1)minimal, repetitive compositions utilized to instill an introspective, calming and "spiritual" response in a viewer and (2)more complex, culturally textual compositions which pursue commentary on popular visual language systems. My paintings also address the concept of language as a cognitive tool which determines identity. Ultimately, they comedically illustrate the futility of the attempt to transcribe spiritual experience into language.
While addressing ideas on consciousness, my work also speaks on what it means to live in a technologically advanced society of consumables. It comments on my identity as a painter operating within the perhaps contrary contexts of lofty ideas and digitally produced advertising. I believe the spiritual quest is the pursuit of "true" identity and that the development of identity depends upon the integration of the disparate sectors of the mind. To me, the greatest work of art would be an algorithm housed in a machine which people could enter and then emerge more integrated in their life experience. The desire for spirituality manifests itself in the forms of love and levity, feelings which I express in my paintings. My primary conceptual motivation is derived from the contradiction and struggle between realized and idealized being. |
